The lilies here are eager decided and free. I gather them lacerating their wild roots. Easily they give way my knife bleeding with chlorophyll slick against the sun.

Deep in the field grasses reach up on their way to a fiercer comprehension.

The wind stands still. Sap wells from the cuts I have made.

I gather them loving them indifferently so that their dying does not hurt me. They would scream if they spoke. Only now they prefer to flaunt their rigid vertebrae and punish me with this long and awful silence.

Binh Nguyen was born in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam, and is a political exile to the USA. A former student of literature and philosophy, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University, where she was a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow and a George Starbuck Fellow. Now living in New York City, she is working on her first poetry collection, As Though We Are One. More information can be found at maythefirst.net.

The Stinging Fly magazine was established in 1997 to seek out, publish and promote the very best new Irish and international writing. We believe that there is a need for a magazine that, first and foremost, gives new and emerging writers an opportunity to get their work out into the world.